Global Mafia: The new world order

of Organized Crime

By Antonio Nicaso and Lee Lamothe

With the advent of Yeltsin's Russia and the fragmentation of a
half-century of East-West and client-state confrontation, a whole
new criminal empire has grown up to supplant, partially, Cold War
economics. This is the "global village'' of organized crime, worth
$750 billion a year, embracing every evil from money laundering to
drugs, fraud and conspiracy to gun-running.

The authors demonstrate that Canada's relatively open borders and
lax currency restrictions make us a hub for criminal activity.
Indeed, the assassins of both Trotsky and Rev. Martin Luther King,
Jr., used Canadian passports in furtherance of their crimes.

The film Red Heat superficially dealt with the issue of "joint
ventures'' among diverse criminal gangs, in this case a Georgian
drug ring purchasing dope from a Chicago supplier, the
"Cleanheads.'' But Russian gangs are amongst the most brutal and
opportunistic in the world. Along with Tongs, Triads, Yakuza, and
dozens of other mafias better- or lesser-known, today's worldwide
web of crime easily transcends barriers of language.

Nicaso and Lamothe, long-time crime writer-researchers, reveal the
insidious nature of global lawbreaking, in this hard-hitting expose.

Reviewed by Allan E. Levine, an Ottawa writer
Ottawa Citizen 1995